I was writing some code and had a funny thought, that the act of writing code can't be a creation of something new, and must be the change of something into something else, which led me to do a random google search and come across this article:

DALAI LAMA: In terms of the actual substance of which computers aremade, are they simply metal, plastic, circuits, and so forth?

VARELA: Yes, but this again brings up the idea of the pattern, not thesubstance but the pattern.

DALAI LAMA: It is very difficult to say that it's not a living being,that it doesn't have cognition, even from the Buddhist point of view.We maintain that there are certain types of births in which apreceding continuum of consciousness is the basis. The consciousnessdoesn't actually arise from the matter, but a continuum of consciousnessmight conceivably come into it.

HAYWARD: Does Your Holiness regard it as a definite criterion thatthere must be continuity with some prior consciousness? Thatwhenever there is a cognition, there must have been a stream ofcognition going back to beginningless time?

DALAI LAMA: There is no possibility for a new cognition, which has norelationship to a previous continuum, to arise at all. I can't totallyrule out the possibility that, if all the external conditions and thekarmic action were there, a stream of consciousness might actually enter intoa computer.

HAYWARD: A stream of consciousness?

DALAI LAMA: Yes, that's right. [DALAI LAMA laughs.] There is apossibility that a scientist who is very much involved his whole life[with computers], then the next life . . . [he would be reborn in acomputer], same process! [laughter] Then this machine which ishalf-human and half-machine has been reincarnated.

VARELA: You wouldn't rule it out then? You wouldn't say this isimpossible?

DALAI LAMA: We can't rule it out.

ROSCH: So if there's a great yogi who ndbn front of the best computer there is, could he project hissubtle consciousness into the computer?

DALAI LAMA: If the physical basis of the computer acquires thepotential or the ability to serve as a basis for a continuum ofconsciousness. I feel this question about computers will be resolvedonly by time. We just have to wait and see until it actually happens.

how can you not love the Dali llama? Lol

“Freedom is secured not by the fulfilling of one's desires, but by the removal of desire” – Epictetus